Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2017 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY Don’t miss on the 27th Happy April Fool’s Day for tomorrow! 2 Happy birthday to Walter Percy Chrysler, the American industrialist and inventor who founded Chrysler Motors. 3 In 1973, the first portable phone call was placed by inventor Martin Cooper. 5 6 The eighth edition of the FNB Mpumalanga Wine Show will be taking place at the Southern Sun Emnotweni Arena in Nelspruit. 7 The theme for this year’s World Health Day is Depression: Let’s Talk. 8 In 1953, the first 3D motion picture produced and released by a major company, Man in the Dark, opened at the Globe Theatre in New York City. 11 14 On this day in 1912, American engineer and inventor David Sarnoff picked up distress call relayed…

Do you have unusual questions about the world and how it works and why stuff happens? This is the place to ask them. Don’t be afraid. Nobody will laugh at you here. Email popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za Questions will be selected based on quality or at our whim. Q What’s considered the largest undiscovered treasure? A A FULL-SCALE platinum-skinned model of the Hindenburg stuffed with Nazi plunder, biblical artefacts, crates of alien space-propulsion gear lost at sea when the life-size replica of the Titanic transporting it tore its solid-gold hull on a gigantic, floating diamond somewhere close to Atlantis. Well, that or an honest politician. Actually, there’s some pretty tempting stuff still out there, ranging from priceless Indiana Jones-grade relics to missing art (seven Fabergé eggs, for instance, worth perhaps R300 million apiece)…

PART 3: SWEAT IT OUT THEY DON’T TELL YOU how empowering it is to decide to have a cheat day. You’re not caving to a craving, but making a measured decision. Do your best, but don’t sweat the small things. Have the birthday cake if it’s someone special in your life, don’t pass up the once in a lifetime gold leaf milkshake and drink that beer with your good friend. Life is about the experiences. The same thrills you feel when summiting a difficult climb, can be had when you take a bite of the sandwich your toddler is offering you. Researchers at the Catholic University of Portugal School of Business and Economics and Tilburg University ran two controlled experiments to demonstrate the benefits of planned goal deviations in a…

EXPERT: Dale Drew, chief security officer at Level 3 Communications, a telecommunications company and Internet service provider WHAT WORRIES HIM: The accessibility and adaptability of Mirai, the malware used to take over smart thermostats, remote cameras, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Mirai was used to stage the distributed-denial-of-service attack that took down sites including The New York Times, Netflix, and Reddit in 2016. WHY: “We typically see evolution of botnets occur fairly slowly over time, but with Mirai, that first code has been released [online, so that other hackers can add their own features]. It’s a fairly sophisticated botnet right out of the gate, and we’ve seen a lot of people evolving it with new capability and new features – not only in acquisition of victims, but also…

Wads of gum assist with alignment On occasion, you may have a project for which it’s best to reuse existing wallmounting holes, but have no easy way to transfer them to a new work piece. For example, reader Charles Mekaru and his helpful neighbour James Eichelberger, recently found themselves installing a new bathroom basin. Rather than cut another set of mounting holes through the tiled wall surface, they opted to drill holes in the basin to match the existing ones. But how to mark their locations? They came up with a clever solution: after chewing wads of gum, they put them in the existing holes, then pressed the new basin in place against the wall. When the basin was removed, the gum stuck in the locations of the needed holes.…

WINNING LETTER SEEING YOUR MARCH 2017 COVER (pictured right), naturally I turned to Page 30 and “Rise Of The Robots”. After reading it with much interest, memories of my early childhood came flashing back. In the movie of the same name Omega Man, as played by Charlton Heston, did not have what we would call a superior intellect, but he had a goal: to kill his victim. We are in possession of slaves that are persistent plodders. Computers do many things brilliantly; in 1994, one of them defeated the chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov. When taught the rules of a game, they can often defeat their own teachers. They can sort through billions of pieces of information in seconds, solving problems in mathematics and data-processing that no human would be able…

SPORTS TECH DIGITAN INSIGHTS IDITARDD RACE LIFE STYLES GROMMING GREAT UNKNOWNS IT’S VALENTINE’S DAY in Johannesburg and the city’s empty stadium echoes the sound of rugby. The primal call and response between Lions players on the training field and the vacant stands is a stark contrast to the throngs of reinvigorated fans who filled Emirates Airlines Park at home games at the end of the 2016 Super Rugby campaign. To be fair, it feels almost like the empty seats from earlier this decade when the Lions were relegated to make way for the new whipping boys of SA rugby, the Kings. But a winning team sells tickets and, in rugby, good data ensures good results. There’s a reason that a video camera in the stands is the only bit of…

WHAT IS IT? The Chinese manufacturer capitalising on the P9 proof of concept. Improving on an impressive camera system was never going to be easy, but the larger format Huawei standard-bearer device did it. WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT? As you can tell, the camera is quite special. The 20 MP monochrome camera collects even more light detail and the algorithm seems a bit more mature. A nice graphics spec bump to the Mali-G71 GPU is also appreciated, but by far the most pleasing thing about the Mate 9 is the Nougat (Andoid 7.0)-based EMUI 5 and the debut of the app drawer on a Huawei device. WHAT’S BAD ABOUT IT? Although the homebaked Kirin 960 chipset brings impressive power to the table, the handset was prone to severe slowdowns under…

1 GB COST TO CONSUMER TOP 20 COUNTRIES (USD) SOURCE: RIA AFRICAN MOBILE PRICING (RAMP) INDEX DATA IS TOO EXPENSIVE – well, for me, at least. Sans Wi-Fi, I consume just a little over 10 gigs of data a month, which ends up costing more than what I spend on food and transport combined. And I’m not alone in this. You only have to gather around the water cooler, meet friends for coffee or spend time online to encounter someone with yet another complaint about how data is too expensive and which service provider is taking customers for a bigger, increasingly costly ride. In simple terms, the more money you have, the better your access to basic information. Understandably, there’s concern at the highest level among those tasked with managing…

THEY SAY you can tell the make of a man by what he keeps in his garage. Okay, no one says that. But in any case, Michael Hurley’s freestanding garage in Venice, California, is a monument to the sport of cycling. And Michael Hurley is a monument of a cyclist. For one thing, he stands 1,9 metres tall. For another, he’s married to a former professional cyclist with whom he rides constantly. Michael Hurley joined Strava – a cycling tracking app where, instead of checking in to your local café the most times, you try to pick off your friends in fictional group rides – in 2011. Since then he’s ridden more than sixty thousand kilometres. This is at least fiftynine thousand more kilometres than I’ve ridden in the same…

MAKING COPPER BRACELETS started as a way to combine spending time with my two loves: my girlfriend and my workshop. My girlfriend is a real trouper and only halfheartedly chastises me for my compulsive need to putz. She’s forgone parties to help me chainsaw logs for liveedge furniture, weld tables, and stoke a 2 000-degree forge. But even though we’re in the shop together, it is not always easy to share any real intimacy while wearing earplugs, a full-face mask, and operating heavy machinery. This means I am constantly looking for Saturday projects we can do together without power tools. One such weekend, we got lost in the abyss of YouTube DIY videos looking for a project that would let us have some shop time together. When we managed to…

A / ANKER POWER-PORT 4, POWERLINE+ CABLES, AND POWERCORE 20000 BATTERY In underdeveloped countries, every second with a working outlet is precious. That’s why welldressed adults will sit on filthy airport carpets to charge their devices. Get Anker stuff. Founded by Google alumni, this company quietly makes the best accessories you can buy. The PowerPort will simultaneously charge four devices at the highest possible amperage and the cables are braided strong enough to pull a stuck donkey. B / SONY HX90V (R6 700) With a smartphone camera, you shoot predictable, eye-level photos. With a camera camera, you consider framing, shutter speed – variables that result in shots that stand a chance of becoming, you know, photographs. The Sony’s small size, pop-up viewfinder, and huge 30x zoom let you get details…

1969 Introducing the technowriter: half computer, half typewriter. Bulky as they looked, these portable machines were very useful for writers as well as being less expensive and simpler to use than a personal computer. Today, we’ve replaced the actual writers with something cheaper and easier: Artificial Intelligence, which is being used to generate financial and sports news reports. 1940 For French nurses in the ’40s, learning how to parachute jump was just as important as learning how to patch up a wound. French flying nurses would spend three months learning how to jump and practise folding and maintenance of parachutes so they could easily swoop down on a disaster armed with medical supplies and first aid kits. 2004 Virtual reality is huge right now. You can even buy a VR…

EVERY MARCH, IDITAROD MUSHERS making the final push towards the finish line in Nome, Alaska, encounter the barren ice of Norton Bay. They’ve conquered 1 300 kilometres of sleep deprivation and bitter cold, but the bay – frozen, flat, white, an 80-kilometre dash in search of the horizon line – is a brutal test. Humans and dogs become disoriented; every year, teams stall on the ice. Some, in real need of help, decide to scratch. When this happens, in not too long and if the wind is not too oppressive, they’ll hear a dull buzz, slowly growing louder. A Cessna will descend, set down on its retractable skis, and a pilot will get out and load them inside, dogs and all. They will be safe. The Iditarod Air Force is…

WHAT IS IT? The iPhone without any compromises. Big, bold and beautiful. I’ve never understood the purpose of the Plus model iPhone until now. It’s there to accomplish the kind of tasks that warrant real screen real estate. WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT? Water resistance was an important hurdle for Apple to clear and the company was fortunate that its direct competitor literally set itself on fire. The regular wide angle lens and telephoto lens with the same sensors and optical image stabilising was a masterstroke. Portrait mode is a treat. WHAT’S BAD ABOUT IT? Absence of headphone jack limits the device’s usefulness to media creators (the Lightningto- 3,5 mm adaptor isn’t the ideal solution). And the ample bezels on the large footprint are starting to get irritating now; surely Jony…

THE (NEW) TROUBLE WITH RUSSIA Adversary update SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES In modern warfare, owning the sky is everything. And the cheapest way to own the sky is to shoot down, from the ground, anything that tries to fly in it. The Russian military is currently fielding a new midrange surface-to-air missile system, the Buk-M3, that has the potential to change everything. And by change we mean destroy. Start with the eyes: a powerful phased-array radar that steers its beams electronically to track targets. The vehicle has a new digital brain that can accept data from longer-range radar, which means the M3 will be able to shoot before some systems would have even identified the incoming aircraft. It has six radar-guided missiles with a range of up to 70 km – a…

Stronger than steel and a fraction of the weight, carbon fibre is a brilliant invention. Has been for decades. Junior Johnson was building rule-bending Nascar racers out of the stuff back in the ’80s. But even with all that time to come up with new sourcing and production methods, carbon fibre just won’t stop being expensive. The cheapest new car with a carbon-fibre tub, the Alfa Romeo 4C, is sized for Stuart Little, yet costs as much as a Mercedes E-Class. And the real chariots of the carbon gods, the McLarens and Koenigseggs and Lamborghini Aventadors of the world, are strictly seven-figure propositions. We still haven’t managed to mass-produce the stuff at anything approaching the price of aluminium, let alone steel. Why hasn’t anyone figured out how to make this…

Q I bought some timber that has cup-shaped marks on its face. The guys behind the counter said it was all like that. What can I do about it? AThere are two options for how timber emerges from a log and leaves the sawmill. It can be left as is, rough and damp, or processed to perfection; dry, smooth, flat, and straight. It sounds like you bought wood that is somewhere between the two. The cup marks are caused by a rapid trip through a planer. To remove them, you’ll need to run the boards through a benchtop planer. If you don’t have one, they can be quite useful and save you money. Begin by passing the timber through the machine so its knives barely contact the wood surface. By…

Wood Glass Silicone sealant Wood swells and shrinks as the temperature and humidity change. Glass, not so much. This puts a lot of stress on the bond, so choose a sealant that is elastomeric (flexible) instead of rigid. Metal Wood Contact cement Clean the metal first. Otherwise, any dust or oxidation will come off – along with the glue you just applied. If possible, sand or file the surface to rough it up and give the adhesive somewhere to grip. As with wood to glass, you’ll want a product with a little flexibility. Vinyl Wood Liquid Nails Perfect Glue Bonds to anything. Really. Wood Wood (dry) Wood glue Wood glue is fine, mostly because of its price. But since nearly half of wood glue is water, you’re left with a…

THE BELT IS CUT from a bicycle tyre, which provides an interesting texture and adjustability that allows it to fit nearly any kid. The buckle can be any car you want, and is more than just show: Since it’s hooked on with Velcro, the car can easily be removed when you want to play. Stick it back on your belt when it’s time to go. POPULAR MECHANICS FOR KIDS INSTRUCTIONS kid only parent only parent and kid 1. Use heavy-duty kitchen shears to cut the tyre across the tread. Next, evenly cut along both sides of the tread down the length of the tyre to produce the 30 mm belt width. (You may want to test the width on a favourite pair of jeans to confirm the fit.) 2. Clamp…

WINNING TIP AVOID THE BUMPS My daughter sprints into the kitchen completely unaware of the proximity of her head to the stone kitchen counter top. It has a long overhang, so she is inclined to try to run under it. To stop her from hitting her head on the edge of the counter, I bought a pool noodle with a hollow core. I cut it slightly longer than the counter and split it with a knife along its length on one side. After opening the cut edge and pushing it on to the counter, the noodle stays on the edge without any fixing and has stopped the serious head-bangs. I hope this simple solution might help other parents with the same problem. RICHARD PRIGGE JOHANNESBURG TANKING UP In view of…